The Criminon Effect
by Sudonim
Summary: Chekov's dreams are haunted by a strange beast, a deep-space anomaly turns out to be much more sinister, and once again the crew of NCC 1701 has a fight for survival on their hands. Mild slash, moderate violence, some language.
1. Chapter 1

He decided instantly that she was beautiful, if not for being so weird, and simultaneously imagined that made her all the more radiant.

Clothed in sparkling star dust and the after-burn of a dying star, her hair radiated the colors of ion clouds, newborn nebulae, comet storms, her eyes burned with the fury and brilliance of novae, and fixing on them he at last felt the need to look away.

"_Pavel_," she called to him, "_you must come to us, Pavel! You must come in your starship and see me-"_

He felt something constrict, as if he couldn't breathe, and he tried to turn away further. The feeling grew, overtaking his chest, arms, legs…His very mind seemed choked and trapped, as if lost in a briar and a fog.

"_Pavel_-"

She drew near. The intensity of her flame singed his hair and flushed his skin, turned his blood to boiling, stole the air from his lungs. He groaned at her touch, the light breath of fingertips igniting the short hairs on the back of his arm where her hand trailed. She was too close, too _demanding_-

"_You must…starship…come to me!_"

"No, NO!-" he finally yelped, but as his words found purchase, so did his mind.

He was in his bed, onboard the Enterprise.


	2. Chapter 2

Sulu glanced once at the ensign and sighed internally, re-enacting the same routine he practiced every day: Mount his post, tick all the little boxes on the maintenance review, check with Scotty, check with the captain, check back with Scotty, deduce their current location and trajectory, highlight the day's tasks, tick more boxes, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera…And wait for Pavel to show up, his shift overlapping by two hours for more expeditious rotations (as Mr. Spock so eloquently phrased it). Once Chekov arrived, he'd begin phase two of the day's routine, which entailed mostly appearing busy and seeming occupied while secretly carrying on this hidden flirtatious agenda.

"You feeling alright today, ensign?" Sulu asked in his most off-hand tone, looking over a work order from the night before that for some reason needed to bear his signature. Something about his station, or the warp drive controls, or something to that end. "You look a bit piqued."

"Hrmf," Chekov grunted, shaking his head for good measure. "I'm fine, Mr. Sulu, just fine…I fear the trouble is, I did not sleep as soundly as I should."

"That's the second time this week," Sulu remarked, cocking an eyebrow. "Maybe you should get some sleep aids from the doctor later, if it's getting out of hand-"

"It's not-" Chekov interjected, his tone a bit too loud; Lieutenant Leslie and Uhura both stopped their combined efforts at decrypting a strange and garbled alien signal that had been repeating through the substation frequencies for the past week or so, just to give the unruly officer a quick once-over. Lowering his voice resignedly, his cheeks flaring pink, Chekov continued, "It's nothing, Sulu, I promise. I'm _fine_, I just…Did not sleep well. Again."

Just then, an alarm sounded quietly on his touch-screen, a blinking red strobe outlined by a red hourglass and accompanied by the sound of a 20th-century printer jamming on old-world paper.

"That's unusual," Sulu said slowly, furrowing his brow. Turning in his chair, he realized sinkingly that Captain Kirk was absent from the bridge; Mr. Spock's prominent features were buried in scientific work or some such nonsense, presenting the Lieutenant with his back, so that Sulu had to yell to get his attention: "Commander Spock, I think you should come and see this."

There was something floating out there, roughly half an hour away at their current speed, which Hikaru Sulu had never seen outside a text book. And it frightened him dearly.


	3. Chapter 3

"_Bohze moi_," Chekov exhaled.

He stood looking over Sulu's station, Spock at one shoulder and Leslie pressed to the other, their collective attention fixed on the long-range view of what could only be a dead ship coasting directly into their path. Wordlessly the Vulcan spun on his heel and shot across the bridge, nearly knocking Janice off her feet, reaching for his console before he'd even come to it. The computer chirped thoughtfully as he raced through the Federation memory banks for something both hidden in the deepest archives and seemingly floating just outside the verification clarity of the Enterprise's magnification parameters.

The single still-shot the long range cameras had snapped clearly showed a dusty blue body with a golden, forked 'M' just below her name, which in the spinning half-light of the ship's hull was barely legible.

"The Kha-…Khanate," Sulu squinted as he slowly read the ship's distinctive name. "It's not possible…"

"The vessel disappeared nearly two centuries ago, but no record was made of her subsequent re-discovery," Spock intoned solemnly, still fixed on his research.

Meaning it wasn't impossible, just _unlikely_. On the plus side, Spock seemed to be catching on recently that voicing such facts seemed more to humans as ridicule, not impassive information as he may have intended. McCoy would swear he was doing it on purpose, but as the doctor was still nowhere to be seen, his opinion was about as useful as Spock's declarative statements.

Sinking down on his haunches, Chekov slowly traced the outline of the ship on Sulu's screen, immediately drawing it into an artificial magnification that made it look more like a misplaced bird's egg. He rested an arm across the back of Sulu's chair as he murmured, "I hope to God she's as dead as she would seem to be."

"After all these years, I doubt there's anyone still aboard," Sulu replied softly as Leslie joined Spock at his station. Chekov turned to stare at him as though he'd just realized Sulu was there, looking away just as quickly. Was that blush always there…?

"You newer know with a Cossack," Chekov said gravely, "For all we know, they're watching us as we speak, ewery little thing we do and say, ewen as we sleep-"

"You make them sound like some sort of boogie-men," Sulu scoffed, regretting his gruffness as Chekov turned toward him again, this time leaning over the arm of Sulu's chair as he narrowed his expression to a glare.

"You have _no _idea, _mudak_," he replied darkly, rising to his feet as Spock returned.

Even though Chekov's chair was within arm's reach, it felt like an eternity away to Sulu just then.


	4. Chapter 4

As if summoned by instinct alone, the hissing of the ship's lift doors announced Kirk's arrival on the bridge, McCoy on his heels, the tension pricking slightly as Spock and Sulu both moved to announce their findings simultaneously. As their eyes fleetingly met, Sulu lost the urge to speak; even if Spock's deadpan stare didn't convey the most passion, it certainly had the tendency to make others swallow their words.

"Spock, status report?" the captain asked, his tone brisk but nonchalant. It was his practice to keep business at an amiable level, even if it ruffled Spock's feathers.

"Captain," Spock replied, waiting for Kirk to take the captain's chair, "It would appear that an un-manned space craft of questionable origins has been spotted by the ship's navigation system. Our current trajectory puts us on a collision course. However, alteration of our present course would require significant recalculation, or else risk our cargo."

"On-screen," Kirk ordered as he acknowledged Spock's words and their import, but Sulu was already thinking ahead of him; with a quick tap of his monitor, he transferred the enhanced image of the Khanate's hull to the main screen, the faded blue-and-gold looking more cracked and feeble thanks to the grainy quality of its hyper-magnification. The captain didn't speak immediately, narrowing his eyes as he studied the image, his calm befuddlement slowly clearing to a shocked realization.

It was the doctor's turn to lose his cool first, though.

"Jim, I think this would be a pretty good time to change course," McCoy murmured, so quietly the captain barely caught his words. "In fact, I'd say now'd be as good a time as any."

Kirk threw him a questioning look, but it was clear the thought had already crossed his mind, too. Flying headlong toward a derelict, that was something Enterprise could handle; if the rumors of this ship were true, however, there was no way they could get anywhere near her without falling off the star charts completely, or worse, turning into a decaying ghost ship themselves.

Kirk got to his feet, taking a step down from his elevated chair to the deck of the bridge, his eyes transfixed on the view screen until he stopped between Sulu and Chekov. He focused his attention to Chekov's console suddenly, tapping his screen for a wide-angle view of their current path, bringing up secondary paths and routine bypasses in that quadrant, and then heaved a definite sigh as he turned back to the enlarged image of what was considered one of the most notorious horror stories of the Federation.

"I'm afraid I must concur, captain," Spock intoned gravely, grimacing as Kirk turned on his heel to regard him sharply.

"Now listen here," the captain began, a bit of his vigor returning to his features as he spoke, "It's our mission to explore these…anomalies, wherever we find them, Mr. Spock. Besides, I've never been a…superstitious man-"

"This isn't superstition, captain," Chekov cut in. Sulu realized as he gladly gave him his full attention that the ensign looked a bit…grey. It seemed all the color had drained from his face and he'd sunk in on himself, like a balloon slowly deflating. "This is _проклято, _it is cursed, _a broch_…"

A vacant expression suddenly quelled Chekov's swirling turmoil. He seemed to go in and out of focus somehow, as if wavering through a bad transporter connection, and by the time Sulu realized what was happening, Chekov was already slumping forward on his console, the weight of his collapsing body sliding off his chair toward the floor. Lunging forward, he barely caught Chekov by the shoulders, cushioning the navigator's head against his chest.

Vibrations of sound suddenly raced through the bridge, resonating on such a low and powerful frequency that Sulu feared momentarily his heart's natural rhythm would be offset by its extremity. Looking up frantically, he could see the captain yelling to McCoy, but no sound escaped his lips. Uhura was shouting too, but apart from the way she cradled her ear, flinging her earpiece across her workstation, it was impossible to tell exactly what had just hailed them.

"-to all stations, Code Red!"  
"-try and triangulate the source-!"  
"-God's sake, it's like _nails_ scraping the _inside_ of my _skull_."

Kirk, Spock and McCoy all ceased shouting simultaneously, realizing in unison that the glowering growl had ceased its transmission, and the bridge was once again silent. There was an uneasy quietude about the place, as yeomen and officers steadied themselves, took account of their fellows, and stared awkwardly around in bewilderment. Apart from Kirk's half-heard battle cry, there were no orders issued.

"C-Captain," Uhura said gently, shocking the other personnel on the bridge despite her meek tone, "I-it…came across all frequencies, all at once. It's garbled, but…I think there's a message here, somewhere-"

Sulu suddenly was caught by a violent bought of shame; in his flustered state, he'd simply been sitting on the floor with Chekov in his arms, cradling his fallen comrade, and to his bemusement, stroking his hair while the ensign sloped further into unconsciousness.

"-Doctor," he interrupted Uhura, now garnering all the crew's unwanted attention from her onto himself, "I hate to interrupt, but you've got a patient here."

Rushing across the bridge, McCoy sank to one knee, checking immediately for a pulse and respiration, asking: "And what the hell happened here, anyway?"

"I don't know," Sulu responded softly, "He just…collapsed."

"Could it have been from the recording?" Kirk asked, approaching a step before McCoy's savage 'don't-bother-me-while-I'm-working' glare cut him short.

"It wasn't a recording, sir-" Uhura interjected, but Sulu kept on talking.

"It was before the…_tone_, or whatever you'd call that noise," the Lieutenant pressed, reluctantly allowing McCoy to move Chekov from semi-upright to prone on the floor. "He-he hasn't been acting himself recently, either."

For another moment McCoy worked feverishly before sitting back on his heels slowly, as if recoiling from a very stunned realization. He didn't react further, though; just sat on the balls of his feet, looking dazed, until Spock suddenly cleared his throat, and the doctor snapped back to reality with the power of a whiplash.

"Somebody help me get him up," McCoy demanded, his eyes fixing immediately on Sulu, "Get him up and get him to sick bay, STAT. I've got no idea what this is…but I've got a _very_ bad feeling about it."


	5. Chapter 5

The ship was moving, but not by any will or power aboard. She was drifting like a log in a fast current, sweeping into view of the dingy-blue Khanate and pausing for only a moment, their shadows combining in the crossed-starlight like two Rorschach inkblots completing an intricate tango.

Onboard, the piercing shriek had died away nearly half an hour ago, but what their ears had first missed from the abuse was the new thrumming vibration that ran along every wall and floor, as if the metal of the ship was harmonically tuning itself to that of its neighbor. It was only a gentle rattle, but enough to make cups ambulatory and teeth shiver.

"Captain," Spock said quietly, looking up from his new position at Chekov's abandoned station, "It would appear that our course is being subtly shifted. We are now drifting 2 degrees starboard per second, differential dropping precipitously."

"Mr. Leslie, where will that put us?" Kirk asked without turning his head to face the officer jogging back and forth behind him, trying to complete the jobs of two other officers on top of his own.

The crew had slowly begun trickling into the sick bay, asking for headache medications and fatigue relievers, complaining of sore joints and teeth, but McCoy wasn't in the mood to play doctor when he had a more serious patient on his hands. Chekov had not made any signs of recovery since being evacced from the bridge, and instead seemed to be pitching into a turbid coma, breaking out from time to time with a delirious exchange, only to collapse yet again.

"It's…Not _named_, sir," Leslie replied, frozen in place with incredulity. "It's directly across the Milky Way from home, but it's got no proper name, Captain. I don't understand how that could be…"

For a moment Kirk didn't speak, searching his own memories for a hint at why this strange circumstance might exist, but as much as he strained, the exact notion barely eluded him. Spock offered no insight, and Uhura shrugged her shoulders and shook her head when he looked to her for a suggestion, and he was left without an answer for himself or his substitute-helmsman.

"I bet one of those two would know," Kirk muttered to himself, looking at Sulu's empty seat and Spock's blue shirt where Chekov's gold should have been.

Sulu had gone to sick bay with Chekov and not returned. Kirk assumed he was in the midst of helping McCoy with the horde, but had he known that he was actually posted at Chekov's bedside, he may not have ordered him back to his post, anyway.

Down in the sick bay, however, Sulu was on the verge of a break-down.

"Pavel, hang in there, buddy," he whispered as he pressed his lips to Chekov's forehead, glancing around first to make sure McCoy was busy with administration of medication and Nurse Chapel was yelling too loudly for anyone to every overhear a whispered endearence. He used a folded hand towel to mop the navigator's brow and stood back to watch the waves of pain wash away to a pale sea of terror on his friend's sleeping face, trapped in a nightmare he couldn't save him from.

"_Hnf-…Agh…Stoj, pozhaluista-!_" Chekov whined, drawing his right leg up and twisting the sheets in his balled fists. "_Hikaru, pomogite!!"_

Sulu would never claim to understand Russian well, but his own name was something he was as dearly familiar with as his own two hands, hands that now reached for Chekov through a fog and found him sweating and terrified on a hospital bed, begging him for salvation as some foreign invader tortured his mind. He didn't know why he was so sure that was the case; maybe it was because he'd seen so much of the same on the Enterprise during her long excursion, but he'd claim forever that it was something he _sensed_, as if the air was telling him there was a deadly intruder present.

When their hands met, Sulu swore he felt a jolt of electricity run up his arms and into his ears, making him tingle all over for a moment, and his vision swam with black spots. He didn't let go, not for an instant, and when he caught his breath, he found himself bent over Chekov's bed, the ensign staring up at him questioningly through matted bangs.

"Orders, Captain?" Spock said as he raised his brows at Kirk, turning in his seat to regard the captain, who'd been sitting in silent thought for some time now.

"What _are_ our options, Spock?" the captain replied curtly. "We've got no propulsion, no controls, and no ability to call Starfleet, unless-"

"Still nothing, sir," Uhura offered before Kirk could bark anything at her. "I've been hailing on wide band, but there doesn't seem to be anyone in the sector, somehow. I think that…_thing_…may be blocking out transmissions, somehow."

"…Lieutenant, can we see that planet yet?" Kirk ventured slowly, sitting forward as he pondered the starry viewscreen.

After a moment's hesitation and a bit of poking Sulu's workstation, Leslie gave a triumphant 'A-ha!' as he brought up a front-angled view of a strangely pink-green planet. A halo of metallic debris encircled it like the ice rings of Saturn, made up of what could only be described as the sarcophagi of a dead starship fleet. Off-white to green-ish clouds floated through the lithosphere, obscuring whatever water sources the planet might have had.

"Sensors are…reading oxygen, captain," Uhura said with bewilderment. Checking her readings and diagnostic settings, she shook her head as she continued, "I didn't realize we were that close, but…There seems to be some sort of signal coming _off the planet_. Trying to decode it now…"

Kirk sat back again in his seat, regarding the odd, dead world. They had no choice but to get a closer look.


	6. Chapter 6

The planet below was an optical illusion: Flimsy white-green clouds meandering over a blueish strata and short tracts of electric-green experimental terra-formation gave the false impression of a brilliantly neon Earth, but its excesses in color were its only contribution to an otherwise seemingly-dead world. What little data the ship's computers could read from the ancient, broadcasting probe floating lost amid the shrapnel cloud like an ice ring around the planet, told her that this world's history before human arrival was unknown, that no attempts to uncover her past had ever been made, and that whatever work had once endeavored to mar her glowing face, apart from the spotty verdigris, had all been moved underground, again for unknown reasons.

Setting aside this terribly pockmarked report, Kirk didn't even bother to sign off on the document before shoving the PADD roughly into a yeoman's hands and glaring him away, a sour frown twisting nearly into a scowl as he pondered the ringed planet on the viewscreen. Life support systems were still functional, but apart from restoring electrical conduits supplying power to the food processing units and the strangely-linked lift services, Scotty had been baffled by the lack of internal damage to the vessel.

That report Kirk had signed nearly half an hour ago, the same amount of time it had taken Uhura to decrypt the signal from the research probe, and for McCoy to let the captain know he couldn't return his navigator to work until further notice.

Sulu, on the other hand, had been compelled to return to his station.

"Mister Scott, anything new to report?" Kirk asked the engineer as he flipped on a private channel using the control panel on the command chair.

"I dun'na think there's anythin' _to_ report, sir," Scotty replied, his voice conveying the exhaustion the captain couldn't otherwise see. "I kin'na find anythin' a'tall wrong w'the girl, let _alone_ anythin' worth repairin'. If you asked me, sir, which I noted no-one has just yet, it may'abe nothin' _is_ wrong."

"What d'you mean, Scotty?" Kirk inquired, furrowing his brow.

"If I may, captain," Spock interjected, turning away from his work to regard the captain frankly, "It would appear that, if Mister Scott's findings are correct, which I do not doubt, our answers lie somewhere on the surface of this planet."

"Or beneath it, more exactly," Uhura added. She plucked her communications device from her ear and rolled it in her open palm, pondering the information she'd managed to decode and enter into her terminal. She read back what she'd gathered as Kirk and Spock came across the bridge to join her: " 'Depth of work allows us to close out radiation. Searching for electrical signals in bedrock. Suspect this drew us down.' It seems they had to move their operations beneath the surface, sir."

* * *

"_Chekov-"_

This dream was not about her. She had left him for the time, or perhaps his subconscious was too much a challenge for her to intervene. Either way, he didn't mind the absence.

Instead, he could see Sulu in his mind's eye, assembled just as he had been before Chekov's heavy eyes betrayed him into sleep. Now, though, it was not the rigid mattress of the sickbay bed beneath him but lush, warm grass, and around them not the ship, but one of the many decadent gardens of Epsilon Ceti B, and for the life of him Chekov couldn't figure out if this was a waking dream or a long-suppressed memory. Somewhere in the back of his mind he heard the sound or starship engines, of crying birds, and the tinkle of broken glass like a flourish in an otherwise poorly composed melody, but above this timid roar he could hear Sulu speaking:

"...that you were going back," he murmured, petting the damp hair from Cheokv's brow as he spoke. "There's not much work left for them to do, Pavel, you know that, and when they're finished, the czarina is going to make you proud of yourself, and nobody will like it, least of all me."

"Hikaru, vhat are you-?" Pavel croaked; his throat is sticky, as if filled with warm syrup. He coughed and tasted copper, and a faint hint of sour.

"You'll have to remind all of us," Hikaru continued, and he was Hikaru now, not Sulu, because they are two very different people, after all.

Underground, they have to look for them underground, but the holes aren't safe, and the land is worse, and the water isn't safe for drinking, not after the little ones died there-

He tried to sit up but Hikaru was in the way, hands on either side of his chest, face so close their breath is a single thread of twisting air, leaping and dying between them. He felt Sulu's lips like a searing brand against his own, tearing something old in him and replacing it with something new, and it is no longer the air twisting between them, but both of them, twisted together.

* * *

A long blue tract of grass rolls upward and away into a clear green film of sky, an atmosphere like glass that shows beyond it an endless reach of stars blocked by The Wall, its impenetrable nettle of steel like the teeth of a barbed wire halo. A warm breeze with a hint of volcanic ash whips the blue blades into a mild frenzy, but the humanoid shape in the gunny-sack robe ignores it, his hood pulled tight around his face to keep the swarming Milfoil wasps from getting to his ears, his gloved hands still twisted and sore from his last encounter.

Somewhere out there, he knows, is a ship: He knows this like he knows his own name, Chagatai, and the year of his birth, and the names of all his bears and forebears. He knows the ship is there, and it is coming, and that everything is about to change.

He knows because She told him.

She knows because She called them.


End file.
